


Replacements

by fawn_writes



Category: Homestuck
Genre: AU, Androids, Angst, Denial of Feelings, Earth C (Homestuck), Hal doesn't participate, Hal has a body, Jake has issues, M/M, Masturbation, Minor Character Death, Past Jake English/Brobot, Past Jake English/Dirk Strider, Porn with Feelings, Psychological Trauma, Robots, Tough Love, UST, feelings with porn, grandma english - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:01:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27151480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fawn_writes/pseuds/fawn_writes
Summary: AU that takes place on Earth C after main Homestuck events. Hal is not a part of sprite anymore and is an android now. ...and then he is gone, but the body stays. As a good friend, Jake takes care of the body in his abscence and slowly finds out that his feelings are much more complex.He griefs. In his own way.
Relationships: Auto-Responder | Lil Hal/Jake English, Brobot & Jake English, Jake English & Dirk Strider
Kudos: 2





	Replacements

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically PWP, only that I can't write pure porn and always find myself stuck in psychoanalyzing everything that's going on.
> 
> Also I shall apologize for possible mistakes, English is not my native language.  
> Feel free to let me know if something is wrong with tags or otherwise, I haven't used AO3 for publishing purposes before.

The bed is too soft. Though it’s pretty much the same, as usual, at this exact moment Jake feels like his body is sinking, almost like something from above is pushing him down further and further. Some unseen weight on his shoulders. Across his chest. Right on the forehead. It is not suffocating, but it’s pretty close; one day he will be too tired to continue breathing and struggling through the thick veil of his unresolved feelings and he’ll just… stop. 

He can’t stop looking at the head lying on the pillow next to him. It’s not connected to a body or something, no. And there’s even more to it – it’s a familiar head, an artificial one with a complete lack of light in its lenses. Nobody’s home. Everything is silent and it freaking hurts so much more than Jake has expected it to. 

It means something.

It means nothing. But still, here it is.

The body’s still there too, lying on the table partially dismembered and in various stages of being cleaned and polished and reconstructed at once. The process that ideally should’ve been finished by now, but something went completely wrong. Both in quite a common and in a twisted sick way. If Jake had had even a slightest idea of that being possible, he wouldn’t probably even start this already questionable affair and just left this hollow robot body where it fell, but here he is, lying in his own bed with the dismantled head being guest in it for too long. That and also the arm, but he can’t bear thinking about it a second longer than necessary. Real sick, isn’t it?

Jake moves his hand slightly, so he can cup the foreignly smooth chin and pull the head closer to himself until it’s right between his own chin and the shoulder, in the small of the neck. Until it’s possible to close his eyes and nuzzle into the polished surface of the forehead, unnatural texture of loose hair strands. He’s not hurting anyone, he says to himself, it’s completely fine, and only then he lets his other hand wonder down his own body, which is, on the contrary, too alive and too hot. Too human. And in a very human way he doesn’t feel right about doing what he wants, so when his hand slips past both his sleeping shorts and his boxers cupping his half-mast gently but generously, Jake furrows his brow a little.

This is some well-known gesture already. He’s a weirdo alright. And even worse – he’s not going to stop.

It isn’t easy to explain even to himself, and no explanation feels satisfying and calming enough. He doesn’t need to be a smartass to understand some basic things, though. Growing up on an deserted island in the middle of nowhere does damage to a teenager, even if the internet connection is also a part of the equation. Jake has seen enough movies to imagine what he could become in such circumstances; a sociopath, a serial killer with a malfunctioning brain, a mere animal form of self that only knows how to hunt and survive in a dense of jungle. But he didn’t, and isn’t that a success? And he was even so lucky to feel other human’s warm embrace and love. He’s alright. There’s nothing wrong with him.

It’s only that he once was so touch starved, that he somehow happened to replace the possible source of giving and receiving love with a replica of his potential romantic interest made of metal.

The smell of metal is still here, in Jake’s head, on his lips, paired tightly with the taste of blood in his subconsciousness. It was a tough love that gave him not love hickeys but actual bruises. Unbearable even; with years passing he has learnt how to hate that everstalking robot wholeheartedly. He learned how to be more attentive, how not to call for an unwanted attention, how to fight back, he started to invent jokes about the situation and sound casually when complaining. But the truth is when you’re really alone you also learn how to get off on the very hands that choke you to blackouts. And then you’re stuck.

If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with, right?

Jake bites his lip and smacks his heel into the mattress bucking his hips. He squirms enough to partially pull down both shorts and underwear without any help from his hands, and that’s pretty convenient so there is no more than just a brief pause to get the lube from the sylladex. Just a series of breath-ins and breath-outs before his fingers are cold too and are tracing every vein on the whole length in such a comforting and familiar way. A not-so-tight grip, some delicate strokes. His much rare way of showing affection to someone rather than much more practiced getting into feisty teenager shenanigans when you’re both already hot and bothered and just looking for some way to put an end to a thing. 

Right, now he does know what the actual (and not even parental) loving touch on his body feels like. He wore those new marks as proudly as he would do with battle scars, the signs of a Lover on a truly cinematic scale, but everything comes to an end, willingfully or not. So he just had to do what he did once: find a replacement.

This time it hit his soul before it hit his body and filled the gap in his heart Jake didn’t even know existed.

The movements are getting much faster, hand slowing down at the head and toying with thin sensitive skin. He wants to open his mouth and exhale fully, he wants to probably whisper something to himself, and – oh how sweet it would be to let out even a single moan. But he would do neither of that. That jerk-off session is the show of shame under the brand of English, and Jake finds himself deeply in fear of what might come out of his mouth with his troubled state of mind. It’s crawling on his back, an ice cold sensation of something he doesn’t know what to do with. The name. The statement of feeling. All the things Jake wants to do to his metal body – or he wants **him** to do them to him. It’s almost like he’s trying to talk to the person inside the shell of a head meeting his breath that’s getting heavier with time. Only that there’s still no one and the only person here with Jake is his own pathetic self.

It’s definitely not healthy to talk to himself like that. But it’s just another necessary replacement.

It still doesn’t mean anything when Jake pushes his free hand under the pillow and reaches for the robotic arm grabbing it with such force his toes curl a little and his whole body tenses even more. It’s so cold and solid it might as well become his anchor to the reality but funnily enough it allows Jake to do exactly the opposite. It allows him to believe a little. Put his faith in a gesture of friendship, which is somehow also sexual and romantic and the one he didn’t even need before – and trade it for the feeling of having someone particular lying next to him. The not-so-pretend feeling of stiff cold lips pressing into the jugular, one step away from a bite, the possibility of his clever eyes noticing every movement of the hand below, glistening from wetness and stroking so good it almost makes the black dots appear before his eyes. The very real smooth and polished edges of each phalanx under his fingers that will surely smell like a motor oil later. The curve of a palm. A somehow cute nail plate. All the imaginary love that could have been gifted to him.

When he comes, the wave of shame disappears into low tide so all he feels is a pure bliss. But soon it’s back, and Jake hides everything he’s done under the blanket, breathless. All the stains, though not on his self. All his wrong choices. His unhappy loneliness.

It’s surely twisted as fuck, but it’s alright, he thinks, as long as it doesn’t mean anything.  
But it does.


End file.
